The present invention relates to novel, improved appliances with upgradable operating systems and to methods for upgrading those operating systems.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,102 issued Mar. 3, 1998 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,751,369 issued May 12, 1998, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/046,947 disclose certain new and novel products (or appliances) which feature an integrated module having: (a) a player for an optically readable, encoded data storage device such as a video compact disk, an audio compact disk, a laser disk, or a digital video disk; (b) a player for retrieving data from the disk; and (c) a television receiver with a screen on which the retrieved information can be displayed.
The products in this family have user-selectable operating modes in which the appliance is operative to carry out a different function called up by choosing the appropriate user-selectable mode. Examples of the operating modes built into various modules are:
For a variety of reasons, such as cost and the requirements of particular markets, not every product of the character described above will have all of the listed modes of operation or, in other instances, one or more modes may be disabled. However, one may wish to add one or more additional operating modes to an existing unit or to enable a disabled mode of operation.
There have now been invented and disclosed herein certain new and novel appliances of the character described above and so configured that the operating system of the unit can be upgraded to provide one (or more) additional modes of operation, either by adding the wanted mode of by enabling a previously unavailable mode.
These systems are upgraded by loading and running a disc with a program containing the operating system and application software needed to furnish wanted additional mode(s) of operation of the appliance. A disk as just described can also be employed to reload an existing program, for example, if the supply of power to the appliance is interrupted while a program is being loaded or if a power surge during the loading process results in one or more bits being lost.
Advantage can be taken of existing software in a novel process invented to produce disks of the character described above. This significantly reduces the costs of making the disks.
At the same time, flexibility in the data available from the disk is provided by a novel software package employed in conjunction with the existing software. For example, the just mentioned software package allows a disk to be encoded so that an advertiser""s message will appear on the screen of an appropriately configured appliance when the user selects its INTERNET mode of operation. The software can also be employed to encrypt the data read to the disk, to update an existing program, and/or to convert data available in one format to a different format which allows the data to be burned into a master disk under the control of also conventional software.
Another advantage of the novel operating system upgrading methods disclosed herein is ease of operation. All the user need do is load the disk and then press a single, PLAY (or equivalent) button. From that point the installation of the program proceeds automatically.
The novel appliances disclosed herein have instructions stored in flash (or other non-volatile) memory that calculates an error detecting checksum each time the unit is powered up. A second checksum, one of the data on the laser readable disk, is calculated when the disk is loaded and the PLAY button is pushed. This ensures that a program with a defect identified by the checksum calculation is not loaded into the memory of the appliance.
Still another advantage of the novel appliances disclosed herein is that only a very simple loader needs to be permanently retained (or locked) in the non-volatile memory of the appliance. The only function of this routine is to load a second more robust loader into memory from the laser readable disk. The more robust loader then loads the program stored on the encoded disk into the non-volatile memory.
The objects, features, and advantages of the invention will be apparent to the reader from the foregoing and the appended claims and as the ensuing detailed description and discussion of the invention proceeds in conjunction with the accompanying drawing.